A damning review of Microsoft’s new Zune media player has predicted that the player will be dead in the water within six months.

Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, reviewer Andy Ihnatko pulled no punches in his assessment of the player. He found it difficult to install and lacking compatibility with either Windows Media Player or Microsoft’s Playsforsure scheme. It is also, he believes, loaded with features that record companies like but which users will hate.

"Avoid, is my general message,” he writes.

“The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.”

Other points of contention include the lack of support for podcasts (described as “insanity”), Wi-Fi that can only be used to send heavily DRMed tracks rather than useful features like wireless synchronisation, and the fact that Microsoft pays a fee to record companies for each player it sells.

"These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it, " Ihnatko reports Doug Morris, chief executive of Universal Music Group as saying.

"So it's time to get paid for it."

He concludes that as Microsoft has chosen to ignore consumer needs in favour of the desires of the recording industry the player will be dead within six months, and he wishes it good riddance.